This Org is Breaking the Stigma around Mental Illness

This week Grotto catches up with Jeff Jackson, founder of Depression2Extinction. He’s on a mission to eliminate the stigma that surrounds anxiety and depression.

“If you go into a space that you know is safe to share what you’re frustrated about, and you know the other person isn’t going to react to what you’re sharing, you start to open up and be a little more honest about it,” he explains.

Video Transcript

Jeff Jackson: My name is Coach JJ.

Depression2extinction — also known as d2e — was kind of founded out of a necessity of my own, going through my own journey. Our mission really is to focus on eliminating that stigma by changing the way people connect with their emotions, themselves, and others.

D2e athlete ambassadors compete in races to raise awareness.

Jeff: We’ve created two forms of training. We have our “be real check-in.” Our “be real check-in” process is where you go through your 10 core emotions, you rate them on a scale from one to 10 — one, not feeling it; 10, really feeling it; and anything in between.

And then we also have a leader’s guide, which would actually show you how to conduct a small group. If you go into a space that you know is safe to share what you’re frustrated about, and you know that the other person isn’t going to react to whatever you’re sharing, you start to open up and be a little more honest about it. The small groups is just a great way for people to support other humans and share our stories and share our experiences.